Europe on $5 a Day, Part III

Two months ago, before we left for Mexico, this blog was telling the fabulously interesting and heartwarming story of my first trip to the "continent" in 1972. Do you remember where I left off; getting on a train for Vienna where I had an old girlfriend and an even older cousin? No? Well, that's all right, because it wasn't true. We went to Florence instead. My pathetic journal records almost nothing about Florence except that it rained off and on, and that it was a Sunday, a free day at the museum and therefore very crowded. But I do remember the Uffizi Palace museum where we saw works by Da Vinci, Botticelli, Titian, Michelangelo, Fra Lippo Lippi and Albrect Durer, just to mention the high points. There is no point in me writing about what we saw there because I could not say anything relevant that hasn't already been said by someone much more eloquently than I, and secondly, I am somewhat underwhelmed by Renaissance art. But I do remember being floored by Michelangelo's "David". Of course, I had seen pictures of it a thousand times, but standing right next to his famous masterpiece has an incredible power over your senses.

Mais oui, the city is very enchanting. As you probably know, only one bridge across the River Arno survived the bombing of WWII. The Ponte Vecchio was the first bridge I'd ever seen with structures, homes and shops on it. In fact, it was hard to appreciate that you were on a bridge at all. My journal records that we got lost, hopelessly lost, and finally got on a bus until we could get our bearings and find our way back to our pension.

I don't record it my journal but the most exciting thing I did in Florence was buy a bicycle. Part of my original plan for this European tour was to do some of it on a bicycle. Scott, my travel partner, was less than thrilled with the idea and no way was he going to buy a bike. Without a doubt it was for the best that we never attempted to travel by bike because we had no knowledge of panniers and campgrounds, handlebar bags and luggage racks, much less the difference between a touring bike and bike built for racing. However, I simply could not resist the great disparity between the U.S. dollar and the Italian Lire. I bought a Coppi racing bike with sew-up tires and Campognolo derailleurs. It was light as a feather and you could lift it with one finger. It would not have lasted five minutes carrying panniers loaded down with a tent and sleeping bag and me in the saddle. I paid $130 which was probably 20 or 30 million lire and when I got it home, it was appraised at around $500. I shipped it to Vienna, our next stop on our European tour.

Vienna was an important destination for me because I had an old girlfriend going to school there, and my cousin Judy and her husband Dave were working there. "Old" girlfriend is a misnomer because I was recently graduated from college and Susan was still in high school, doing her senior year abroad. The age difference had doomed the relationship several years before, but we had remained good friends. Susan was the daughter of a Czech couple living in Chicago, and Vienna was the closest anyone could get at the time to Czechoslovakia which was off limits, tucked away behind the Iron Curtain. Susan was living in the apartment of a very proper Viennese lady, a spinster or widow, who filled the dark and musty place with antique china, doilies and chintz. Between Frau Spinsterhaus and my buddy Scott, the relationship remained dormant but we were able to go out and explore Vienna with Susan. She took us to the Hapsburg Crypts, which was filled with bones and skulls. I don't remember seeing this skull, pictured above, with the monstrous crown, but I do remember wondering why anyone would save all the bones from all the family members and pile them in one dank cellar. Susie also took us for a visit to a coffee house where we had expensive cups of strong black coffee and sacher-torte, the iconic Viennese chocolate cake, and watched proper Viennese in near formal attire drinking coffee.

We also looked up my cousin Judy, who is perhaps ten years older than I am. Dave was away, travelling for business and I can't remember whether he was with the State Department or a University Professor, but sweet cousin Judy took us to Schoenbrunn Palace, the humble home of the Hapsburg clan. I've not been to Versailles, and I'm sure Schoenbrunn looks like a log cabin in comparison, but it was nonetheless very impressive. As with other places of this vintage and opulence, I always wonder how anyone was able to stay warm in the winter. The ceilings were 20 feet high and all the rooms were the size of small houses. Each room, as I recall had a grandiose fireplace that everyone must have huddled around all winter rubbing their hands together. Still, it was very beautiful and formidable, a great ostentatious display of power and wealth, and very suitable for the rulers of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. (Does anyone know how many languages were spoken in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and what they were?) We said "Goodbye" to Judy, went to dinner with Susan at her favorite restaurant, said "Auf Weidersein" to Susan, and hit the bars.

We left on the morning train to Amsterdam. Germany was a disappointment for us. Very green landscape, but flat and uninspiring. The larger cities were bombed to rubble during the war and seemed a tad modern and again, uninspiring. We got off in Hannover, but there was an industrial fair going on and we could not find a place to stay, so we got back on the train and went to Nurnburg. It might have been interesting to explore Nurnburg and learn about the war crimes trials, but money was short, Germany was expensive and Amsterdam beckoned.

I was excited to arrive in Amsterdam because of all it's wonderful attractions. Nowhere was I more impressed with the art museums than in Amsterdam....whole museums dedicated to Van Gogh and Rembrandt, primarily, but works by Vermeer, Frans Hals and literally hundreds of others.

At that time, of course, Amsterdam was the center of the world for vibrant, young, hip, culturally groovy guys like Scott and I. But really, to be painfully honest, I think we were flabbergasted by the "youth scene". We'd grown up in Denver, which at the time was an overgrown cowtown, and gone to college in a mountain hick town where the 3,000 students overwhelmed the 2,900 conservative residents. We were not movers and shakers. What we found in Amsterdam was a place that throbbed and pulsed, where, like San Francisco at the same time, 'anything goes'. The "Red Light District" was overflowing with prostitutes in windows, most of them young and gorgeous, and you could stick your head in and ask them how much to partake and they would answer in English. There was the scent of weed in the air, and special bars sold and allowed people to smoke grass. Porn was displayed in shop windows and sex toys, leather accessories, dildos and lingerie were on view. The Heineken Brewery offered tours and then a free tasting of their product (and snacks) on a rooftop terrace overlooking the city. I don't recall anyone telling us we had to quit drinking the free beer. Bicycles were parked in gigantic groups, and beautiful people wandered the street and bicycled over the bridges across the canals. I seem to recall a large plaza and a fountain where hippies and free spirits from all countries congregated, selling cars and motorcycles for their European journeys, selling and exchanging drugs, and meeting others for a night or a lifetime. In short, it was just like Disneyland for adults, and like Disneyland it wasn't free.

Alas, our Eurail pass was within a day of expiring and our traveller's cheques were dwindling to the final few. We had a choice. We could stay in Disneyland, cruise the "Red Light District", drink free Heineken beer, hang out in the plaza and with hippies and vagrants, go to the Anne Frank house, go to more art museums, and then take a few days to get back to Luxembourg and catch a flight home. Or, we could go to London.

To Be Continued

A Couple of Things About Mexico

One has to remember that Mexico is still classified as a Third World country. While we were travelling, we saw scenes like this donkey train in San Miguel. We read in a guidebook that garden soil was still delivered by this method, possibly because there are places too difficult to get to with a motorized conveyance. Whatever the reason, we saw several examples of timeless technology that I've never seen in the States; donkey carts moving hay, shepherds with their flocks between the lanes of the highway, a man with a scythe cutting grass for his cattle, and a horse pulling a plow with a man ahead of him sowing seed.

As you drive through Mexico you notice a country that can't keep up with it's population growth. Buildings are in all phases of construction, mostly unfinished and unfinished for years. There is hardly a bulding that doesn't have rebar sticking out of the top of the wall. Schoolkids go home at noon to make room for the second shift of young scholars to use the same desks and classrooms. In places, there is no trash pickup service. You're on your own to get it to the landfill, if there is one. A plastic bag caught on a bush, waving in the breeze, is probably the most common sight in Mexico. And sadly, the trash seems to consist of things that will never decompose; plastic bottles, plastic bags, and plastic toys. It's very sad to witness, but I saw the following a dozen times: people would roll down the window of their car and out would come a bag of junk, people standing on the street would toss away a recipt or a napkin from an ice cream cone, a plastic bottle would get tossed onto the roadside without a thought. Very typical. Very sad.

Goodbye to San Miguel

We made an excellent house exchange in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Our trading partners have a most wonderful, beautiful and luxurious house. The hacienda has a very unique entrance or approach off of a busy street leading out of the city. There is an archway that has, I believe, living quarters above. You go through the tunnel and up a steep hill (and you've already gained several hundred feet from central San Miguel) to the terrace.

Here's Nancy trudging up the final few feet with the house in the background. The owners call it "2010 territory", meaning it's 10 minutes down to the center of town on foot, and 20 pesos back up by taxi. Well, they were 5 or 10 pesos off the mark, but maybe we got the tourist rate.

There were three levels of terraces with doorways off almost every room onto one terrace or another. We spent a lot of time outside soaking up the sun and looking out at the city.

Nancy captured the moonrise one evening before we headed down into town for dinner.

Out of respect for the privacy of the owners, I won't post any pictures of the interior, but it was very beautifully and tastefully done, as you might imagine from the photos of the exterior. You can see the first, second and third level terraces in this picture, and all of them have green, lush plants everywhere.

Nancy also took this picture of the sun setting over the western mountains with San Miguel in the foreground. We had an interesting time, and here and there, met a few of the several thousand ex-pats, mostly American and Canadian, that live in San Miguel. We left early one morning and were not too far outside San Antonio, Texas that night. Two more days of driving got us home safely.

A Visit to the Pyramids...of San Miguel

We took a day trip to the newly revealed pyramids near San Miguel de Allende, called Canada de la Virgen (there should be a tilde over the "n" in Ca-nhe-da but I don't know how to add it). Our guide was Albert Tyler Coffee, a Louisianan by birth but now with a Mexican wife and two kids, and living in San Miguel. He is a anthropolgist/archaeologist who helped with the archaeology and excavation work done on the pyramids. He told us many times during the day that these pyramids are not really newly "discovered", only newly unearthed and now known to Europeans. The indigenous people have known they were there all along and indeed, can point out other mounds of earth, here and there, that hide additional Mesoamerican structures.

We also were accompanied by "rangers" who were awarded jobs for their volunteer work in the archaeological process. In other words, they were the labor force. They watched us very carefully so that we did not remove artifacts or step where we shouldn't.

The pyramids were on private land, which is now owned by the Mexican government, but the approach is totally on private land. Therfore we had to walk the last kilomenter and a half to the site. You can see a shuttle van in the background.

There are four or five structures, only three of which have been uncovered. They date to 540 to 1050 AD. On the ride out to the pyramids I was talking with Albert and asking him some questions. I asked which of the many pyramids in Mexico were his favorites because he'd been to them all. He replied; "No bullshit, this one." The many features relating to the calendar and astronomical observations made it most intriguing for him. The pyramids are oriented on an East/West axis and on the equinox, the sun sets just about in the center of the notch, where the man is standing in the above photo. Other dates are marked as well, including the solstices, best days to plant and harvest, and other important dates in the Otomi year. These pyramids are the most northerly structures of the Mesoamerican culture and were abandoned quickly about 1200 AD due to drought or attack from the tribes to the north.

Skeletal remains of a human were found at the top of the above pyramid during excavation. Carbon dating showed the skeleton to be 770 to 440 BC. According to signage at the site, "...this means that the remains had been dead and mummified for 1033 years before he was buried in the Red Temple of the Canada de la Virgen." Whoever this person was, he must have been very sacred to the pyramid builders for them to haul around his carcass around Mexico for one thousand years before permanently planting him in his stone tomb.

A lot of pottery artifacts were found, and these were the great clues to the archaeologists adding much information about the people and their lifestyle. These skeletal remains were long referred to as a woman who was a warrior, and later didcovered to be bones of a 9 - 12 year old child. Note the triangular-shaped object sticking out of the top of her skull. This would have been done at the time of internment.

We were allowed to climb up into the top of the pyramid up a very steep set of stairs. Not too long ago, when the pyramids were still coverd with dirt and vegetation, cowboys used to ride their horses to the top up a ramp of fallen stones, to look for thier cattle. The pyramids are constructed of stone, some of it dressed, which I think one or two men could carry. The Otomi had no beasts of burden (i.e. horses, cattle, llamas) and no wheeled carts (except as toys) so they built these structures by carrying the stones in their hands or on their backs.

Coming down the stairs was more precarious than going up. Some of our tour group opted out of the climb. About half of my foot fit on the steps. It is theorized the steps are so steep for three reasons. First, the people who built them were quite small and secondly, a sacrificed body would tumble nicely down the steps, and lastly, because the stairs are so difficult to navigate attackers would be very vulnerable.

After the tour, we were taken to a nearby hacienda, the headquarters for a cattle ranch owned by five brothers, to have a typical, traditional Mexican lunch. Frijoles and arroz, tortillas and a picante sauce, quesadillas, nopali, papas, sopa vegetal, etc. All very delicious and prepared by the Senora above and below.

The Senora had a very primitive kitchen. She had no electricity, a woodburning stove, no running water, yet she fed 12 or 15 gringos without a hitch. It was, to say the least, a very interesting day. On the van ride back into town, most of us caught a quick siesta.

Ghost Towns, Independence and Tequila Ice Cream

We took a road trip yesterday to explore a couple towns generally north of San Miguel, Mineral de Pozos and Dolores Hidalgo. Pozos is more-or-less considered a ghost town of about 2,000 people today, reduced from its former status as a thriving silver city. The ratio of unoccupied to occupied buildings may be 30 to 1, or more. I commented that it is probably the "next" San Miguel and now is the time to start picking up those fixer-uppers, such as the one above (which is for sale). Doug didn't bite.

There are a couple restaurants, artisan shops or galleries, a mini-super market and vestiges of two once-splendid town plazas. An old church and this government building, both abandoned, spoke of a time when the economy was different. Our guidebook indicated that the old silver mines above the city are ideal for picnicking. But if you "go by yourself, be careful...some shafts are unguarded and easy to stumble into if you're not paying attention." We opted to eat elsewhere and more safely.

This horse was tied up outside the mini-super market on the main drag. Just as we were heading into the sunset, this caballero appeared and saddled up.

We made our way over to Dolores Hildalgo, a town famous for three important factors: birthplace of Mexican independence (el Grito); ice cream; and talavera tile. Putting history before eating or art, on September 15, 1810, Miguel Hildalgo, the local priest is said to have launched Mexico's fight for independence with the passionate call to arms "el Grito". There is a very prominent statute of him in the plaza principal, with arm raised in his cry.

As we wandered around the plaza, we noticed that every, and I don't mean just almost every, vendor cart was selling "Nieves el Rico". As best I can interpret this, it means something like "rich snow" or as we know it in the USA, ice cream. But this is no ordinary ice cream, at least some of it. The flavors they sell are unreal, bizarre, preposterous. Yes, they do have vanilla and chocolate for the timid, but who wouldn't want a tequila, shrimp or corn on the cob ice cream cone? Doug, for one.

I opted to be 50% daring: pistache on the top, elote (corn on the cob) on the bottom. Yummy and a suprisingly good combination. Doug had vanilla and chocolate, so I didn't include a photo.

While we were having our actual lunch, after dessert, these two young ladies were able to talk Doug into buying a $10 peso winning raffle ticket for some unknown prize. He had to write down specifics, including our phone number (which he had to get off of Fergus' collar), onto their clipboard, so we know it was surely on the up-and-up. Today we suddenly have four messages on the cell phone that we are unable to retrieve because we can't understand the rapid Spanish instructions, but I'm sure it is to tell us that we have won 1st prize and where to come to claim it.

I poked my head into a few talavera tile shops, but the one that looked most fascinating was behind a rickety chicken wire fence...and closed. Dust was thick. All the other stores were very glitzy with salespeople that wanted your attention the minute you walked in. I was disappointed that the rickety chicken wire place wasn't open, as it had good scrounging potential.

The cry for independence, ice cream, and talavera tile: that about sums up our toe dip into Dolores Hidalgo. I'm not sure what this woman was intently doing, but it appeared to be putting cut pieces of colored paper into a bottle???? But for what purpose? An Hidalgo mystery.

Durango to Zacatecas

We'll do another bit of time-traveling, and fill in the trip between Durango to Zacatecas. The road was a relative superhighway with no Espinoza del Diablo and daylight. There were small roadside vendors set up along the way, and this gentleman's rickety stand filled with baskets attracted our attention. We bought two baskets and he proudly posed for a photo.

We started seeing prickly pear cactus growing in all sorts and forms: small shrubs, tall trees and cultivated patches covered with nets. We have subsequently learned that as a culinary crop

they are called nopali. The pads are sold either "as is" or de-spined and smoothed. In the markets in San Miguel we also saw women cutting them into narrow slices and bagging it for resale. It is used in numerous Mexican recipes and is apparently very valuable for its nutritional properties.

We arrived in Zacatecas mid-afternoon and found our hotel without too much difficulty. No, the photo above is not our hotel. However, our couple-star hotel complex did "occupy" an entire hillside, had 244 rooms, 56 apartments, who knows how many suites, a restaurant, gymnasium, beauty shop, entire road system, and only about 10 occupants total (including us). And, not one blade of grass. Zacatecas sits at about 8,000 feet elevation.

After getting settled in, and watching Mexican TV for awhile, we took a taxi to el centro for dinner at the Acropolis. Zacatecas is one of the "silver cities" in colonial Mexico, founded in 1546. The architecture, the Churrigueresque style similar to that we saw in Durango, is profoundly evident in the three-tiered facade of the cathedral.

Apostles, angels, flowers and fruit adorn the pillars, pedastals, columns and niches in a rather exuberant excess---that's from our guidebook. It was almost like a "Where's Waldo" looking at it, to my untrained eye.

The cathedral was constructed between 1730 and 1775. We did not go inside the cathedral, but our guidebook indicates that the exterior contrasts with the interior in that all of the treasures were lost during the turmoils in Mexico, the Reforma and the later Revolution.

I am assuming that the grandiose architecture in Zacatecas must be representative of a lifestyle that was present at one time during the age of silver. The number of remarkable Baroque limestone buildings speak for themselves.